


森

by PunkHazard



Series: pan pacifica [1]
Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Food Service, Alternate Universe - Restaurant, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-02
Updated: 2015-04-02
Packaged: 2018-03-20 21:06:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3664998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PunkHazard/pseuds/PunkHazard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stacker has taken over numerous restaurants from retiring chefs and owners, but 'Mori' is the first he's overseen from conception to completion. Opening day is fast approaching-- luckily for him, he has a loyal crew and plenty of experience.</p>
            </blockquote>





	森

Stacker walks them into his brand new state-of-the-art kitchen, floor lined with no-slip mats, all the pots and pans with their original stainless steel finish, completely unused and uncharred. The cabinets and fridges and freezers are stocked to overflowing, sinks and prep tables and stoves and fryers arranged for optimum flow, drawing their eyes from one station to the next. 

Hu whistles under his breath and mutters a quiet thanks to the Russians, Sasha and Aleksis having pulled off a gargantuan effort to equip and stock the kitchen in time for a rushed opening.

Pentecost is no feng shui master, but as a chef himself what works in a kitchen comes instinctively. If he's to spend a small fortune opening his latest restaurant-- the first he's overseen from conception to completion-- then it had better have a kitchen that can stand up to the typhoon of Weis blowing through. They're careful with equipment, clean and meticulous, but speed necessitates force which generally results in dings and divots unless otherwise accounted for. 

Cheung leans briefly against the closest counter, jaw dropping open. Jin hisses in through his teeth, immediately plucking a knife off the nearest magnetic rack and running his finger over the blade's edge, turning it in his hand. They have their own knives-- nice ones, custom-crafted in Japan as a personal gift from Stacker some three years ago-- but they'll have cooks under them to worry about soon. Hu actually moans a little, hand over his mouth.

That makes Mako laugh, Stacker smile, and both brothers mildly uncomfortable.

Tamsin still gives him grief for it ('You'll embarrass her!'), but Stacker had decided on his restaurant's name the day Mako's adoption papers were finalized. His old friend wasn't wrong, but he'd let Mako take the lead in decor as well as menu design, fully intending to leave the place to her capable hands once established. One of the triplets had mentioned the irony of a seafood restaurant calling itself 'Mori' when he'd first asked them to move to Hong Kong for the opening, but Mako had smacked Jin on the shoulder and shushed him, which says to Stacker at least that she likes it just fine. It'll be his second restaurant in Hong Kong; Pan Pacifica, still doing brisk business, was his first.

"The menu," Stacker says, handing over a list of ingredients and expected volume of customers, the number of servings for opening day-- tomorrow an hour before noon. Hu's brows immediately draw together, youngest brother already beginning to calculate the amount of mise en place they'd need while Cheung and Jin start casing the fridge, all three of them pulling on their chef's coats and tying their aprons as they go. "I'll show you how I want each dish cooked and plated. Mako, you--"

"I'm staying to watch, sensei."

"Changing rooms by the storage closet," Stacker says, nodding, "everyone's got their own locker."

He walks them through the entire menu; it takes a good half day, Weis taking pictures of each dish as Stacker finishes plating. They end up with plenty of ingredients ready for opening, labeled and returned to the fridge. Mako happily helps them eat, everyone taking only a few bites of each, with nearly two dozen items on the menu. They go out for drinks afterward, triplets scrawling out feedback on napkins while they toss back shots of tequila, adjusting the menu last-minute for Chinese palates.

Less salt but heavier on spices, lighter on heavy cream. Pasta done slightly past al dente. For the future, they suggest more stews, braises and broths; fewer purees. Stacker's specialty is in French but the triplets tell him that seasonality was always a staple of Chinese cooking, and so is simplicity. 

He gives Mako a meaningful look, the youngest member of their team already scrawling notes. Restaurants in Hong Kong see plenty of international traffic, but their location isn't ideal for tourists so Stacker takes it all to heart. A core customer base of locals and a few dishes catering to traditionalists is a decent recipe for success in Hong Kong, and he likes the milder, more savory flavors of Cantonese cooking anyway.

The Weis arrive at six the next morning, bleary-eyed and with mild hangovers all around, but they get to work immediately. Cheung starts breaking down a rack of lamb chops and slabs of pork belly, whole chickens; Jin takes over descaling the assortment of yellowtail and cod, then filleting them into meticulous portions. Hu's on vegetables, occasionally popping pieces of celery or carrot into his mouth as he works. The kitchen is practically silent when Stacker finally stumbles out of his office, scrubbing at his eyes-- he'd been there since five.

"Everything coming along?" he asks first, completely rhetorically; the Weis have worked with him for well over half a decade by now, three of them able to anticipate his needs almost as well as they can each other's. Still, the chorus of ' _Yes chef_!' is always sweet to hear. "The rest of the staff will be here at nine, we open at eleven with every seat booked."

"Who's in the first wave?" Hu asks, not even looking at his cutting board while he juliennes a carrot. "Other than Liu and his crowd at table eight?"

"Our old friend Herc Hansen and his son will be at table seven," Stacker answers. "Tendo on two, expats at three through five, plenty of local press, and two online critics at twelve."

"That blogging pair?" Cheung asks, politely masking his distaste under the guise of struggling with a particularly stubborn bit of gristle. "They always disturb the other customers."

"Geiszler and Gottlieb," Stacker confirms, carefully neutral. 

Jin doesn't even bother with civility; he wrinkles his nose and sticks out his tongue, pretending to vomit. Mako comes in right then, brows quirking slightly in amusement. "Sensei," she says, tugging slightly on Stacker's sleeve and ignoring the brothers, "Dining room is ready. Did everyone have breakfast yet?"

Laughing, Hu dumps a handful of diced peppers into a small, deep hotel pan and pulls another one over, filled with the scraps the Weis are always loath to throw away. 「Mako wants to be the first to play with fire in this kitchen,」 he observes. 「Here, make some omelets.」

「This too,」 Cheung offers, plopping down his own pan of fat and trimmings, taking Jin's as well and sliding them over to the countertop by the stove. Mako glances into them, looks at Stacker out of the corner of her eye and grabs a cutting board and knife. He doesn't stop her, looking on with a wry smile while she busies herself cracking eggs into bowls and beating them to an airy consistency, a pan heating up on the stove.

She makes five hearty omelets, almost more filling than egg, all of them gone within ten minutes before the brothers are back to prep and Stacker heads into his office, then to the dining room to make his rounds. Mako follows her sensei, making displeased sounds whenever he compulsively straightens a napkin or adjusts the setting of forks and knives. The rest of the brigade trickles in as opening draws closer, greeting Stacker as he directs them to the kitchen to back up the triplets and familiarize themselves with the menu.

Stacker's back in the kitchen when the first order prints, ripping out the receipt and laying it flat on the table. "Table eight! Two papaya salad, two yellowtail, three lamb."

"Yes chef!"

The kitchen begins to move, all his veteran linecooks and chefs from previous establishments now manning the crown jewel of his culinary career. Not a single one of them is new to the lunch rush, all of them with predatory grins on their faces as they fire up stoves, fryers, grill, oven doors slamming open and shut. 

Herc pops in just as desserts start going out for the first batch of customers, Jiewen and Xiaoyu at the pastry station plating up sweets they'd prepared several days in advance. He physically turns Stacker around in front of the POS machine, dragging the man into an ecstatic embrace while the brigade holds its breath-- then lets it out when Stacker claps him on the shoulder.

"My compliments to the chef," Herc says, giving the Weis a cursory nod but still grasping Stacker's arm. He leaves quickly, a new rush of diners and orders flooding in, leaving Stacker no time to bask in the attention as he calls out another table’s requests. 

Tendo wanders in after Herc to congratulate the team as well, casually informing them that it's Alison's birthday, so he can't stay long. (Xiaoyu sends out a slice of cake for Alison, a candle-sized sparkler crackling on it.)

Liu comes next, shaking Stacker's hand and congratulating him before grabbing a towel, swaggering up to each triplet and snapping it against the seats of their pants. He ducks out before the brothers can turn on him with their knives, but leaves with a promise to return and treat them to dinner at one of his own banquet halls sometime.

 _Seasoned restauranteur and chef Stacker Pentecost is finally serving the food he's been itching to his entire career,_ Hu reads off his phone the following morning. 

>   
>  _His latest restaurant, 森-- or Mori (moh-rhee, meaning forest), is the first establishment Mr. Pentecost has personally opened, a departure from the dozen or so restaurants he inherited from retiring chefs. Mori, with its minimalist and elegant decor, was named after his adoptive daughter Mako, in honor of her parents Sumako and Masao Mori, who passed away ten years ago._
> 
> ___To start, service was excellent: employees quick, polite and discreet. Moreover, every server we had the pleasure of speaking to was knowledgeable about the menu, and genuinely seemed to enjoy their station._  
> 

Hu pauses to allow the entire kitchen staff to swarm the servers, shouting so loudly his voice would've been drowned out anyway. When everyone finally calms down, all eyes turned back to him, he picks up where he'd left off.

>   
>  _The food itself was phenomenal, merging the best of French haute cuisine with classic Chinese and Japanese tradition. Calling it fusion would be a disservice-- a marriage, perhaps, would be more accurate. We began with a delicately composed first course of yellowtail carpaccio (sauced with a tangy 'ume' reduction and grated wasabi), then moved on to sweet butter-poached lobster on a bed of briny seaweed salad. Our third course was lamb, perfectly seared with a rosemary-infused sour plum compote._
> 
> ___For those paying attention,_ Hu continues, _the progression of light to dark meat is based on the correct order in which to consume sashimi, a callback to Mr. Pentecost's decade-long stint in Tokyo._  
> 

Cheung and Jin high-five, then elbow Hu on the arm, returning Stacker's approving nod with ecstatic grins. "That's Gottlieb?" Jin asks, leaning over Hu's arm to check the byline. "He really got it!"

> _Soups usually come at the beginning of a meal but for Mori, it arrives as a palate-cleanser after the entree, a clear pork and daikon, mushroom and goji berry broth to soothe the digestive tract before dessert. After the lamb, it was a welcome break, deep in flavor but light on the stomach._
> 
> _When asked about his reasoning, Mr. Pentecost named the Wei brothers-- triplets Cheung, Jin and Hu, who've followed him through his most and least successful ventures over the last six years. "Chinese cooking is a five thousand year old tradition," he said. "I'm told it can in many ways be considered medicine, and I decided to incorporate that aspect into my menu in honor of Mori's location, and my personal history with these chefs."_

Stacker has always been magnanimous with credit; it's not the only reason the Weis stayed with him through better offers from bigger companies, but it's one of them. Cheung took three years to figure out why, but when he finally did it only cemented their decision. 'Integrity,' he'd said firmly, after making his brothers promise not to mention it again, 'he has a lot of it.' Stacker refuses to meet their eyes and the crooked grins leveled in his direction, but Mako high-fives each of the Weis before she plucks the phone out of Hu's hand and motions for Xiaoyu and Jiewen's attention. 

>   
>  _Dessert was a light, sweet finish to an excellent meal. The 'froyo' craze had yet to impress me but sliced, toasted almonds dusted over a tart frozen yogurt, drizzled in honey and garnished with strawberries, was perfect for the mid-summer weather._
> 
> ___For cohesion and service, 'Mori' receives maximum points for its full course menu. The prices look quite reasonable at first glance, but are actually a steal given the quality of ingredients and level of technique involved in preparation._
> 
> ___Most importantly, every last thing I tasted was delicious and I will absolutely be back with everyone I can think of, eager to see what else Mr. Pentecost has in store._  
> 

Mako piles onto him first, an exuberant hug around Stacker's waist, the girl herself not quite tall enough to reach his shoulders. Cheung bumps the fist Stacker extends over her head, right before he sidesteps Jin and Hu, both of them closing in to clap Stacker on the back and ruffle Mako's hair. The entire rest of the staff insists on shaking his hand, congratulations coming in no fewer than four different languages. 

When everyone calms down, he flashes his staff a proud smile, then slaps his palm to the counter. "We open in two hours. Back to work."


End file.
